Strangers When We Meet
by Beckles1987
Summary: Alex Drake, a doctor had informed him, had discharged herself, against medical advice, and since then she had dropped of the face of the earth…his part of it anyway. Set after season 2. SEASON 2 FINALE SPOILERS. Language and upsetting themes
1. I'm Bewildered, Resentful

**Ok folks, this is the first A2A fic I've posted...aside from a paragraph or two on fanforum. Reviews and concrit will be welcomed, flames will not. It's been my experience that, even if Gene doesn't do it, karma will come to your house and stamp on all your toys. You can't say I didn't warn you.**

**Disclaimer: I own only the odd bit of merchandise and my imagination anything even remotely connected with Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars is the property of the BBC and Kudos.**

**Rated for language.**

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON TWO FINALE - IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THAT YET (where have you been?!) AND DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED STOP READING NOW!!**

**If there's anything else I've missed PM me.**

**Oh...the title's from a David Bowie song (isn't everything?) and I'm sorry the first chapter is a little on the short side.**

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Gene sat in a dim corner of Luigi's nursing another free drink from CID. He supposed he should have been more appreciative. Even by his standards he was being a moody git but being cleared of attempted murder and having his suspension ended didn't mean everything was better. The suspension of a certain Detective Inspector might also have been lifted but she still hadn't been near the station…or any of the team as far as he knew.

Alex Drake, a doctor had informed him, had discharged herself, against medical advice, and since then she had dropped of the face of the earth…his part of it anyway.

He didn't know what to make of it, any of it. Nothing about her recent behaviour made sense…not that it made a huge amount of sense normally. He'd always known there'd been a lot she wasn't saying, not for nothing was he a Detective Chief Inspector, but he had been equally unwilling to talk about anything other than the job. It hadn't seemed like a problem, neither had her recurring dotty outbursts; she was a bird, a posh one at that.

He hadn't expected her to be sensible but he'd never thought she could be such a lying scheming bitch.

_That tape._

_Her version of 'the truth'._

If he was brutally honest, hearing all that had been worse than the slap. The slap he could shrug off, everything else had festered, would continue to fester until he got some sort of explanation.

When he'd been laying low at the Tylers' house, an altogether weird experience without Sam around, Annie had suggested one. It was almost as troubling as his initial 'lying bitch' theory. Alex could have actually believed what she'd said. She could have 'serious psychological problems', not unlike but more severe than those Sam had experienced after his concussion. Something might have been going wrong in that brain of hers. It meant that there was a chance that she hadn't really betrayed and abused his trust, she could have been ill for the whole year, right under his nose, and he hadn't even noticed.

Gene didn't want her to be ill, didn't want to have threatened violence to a sick woman, a team member, a friend…but surely him being an ignorant bastard would be better than Bolly being a deceitful, conniving cow. The department would take years to get over it, Shaz especially looked up to her…and that dopey bugger Chris…even Ray had started to stand up for her. Definitely easier for them to hate him for a couple of months than her for years…not that he could change the truth, whatever it was.

"Guv?" Knowing that no excuse was good enough to warrant intrusion Gene was less than welcoming to DC Skelton.

"What?"

"Did you want another drink?"

"Does it look like I'd have trouble finding my arse with both hands?" Chris looked at his boss, evidently in too much of a bad mood to be pissed off his face.

"Er…no guv…"

"Then keep 'em coming until it does." Gene looked away from his DC, effectively dismissing him. Drink would help. It had to. At least it was something he understood. The familiar bark of one of his DCs' laughter from the bar prevented him from settling back into his thoughts, normally they'd all give him more space but they were still celebrating him being back on the job and they didn't want to leave him alone. It was a nice enough gesture he supposed but it was bloody annoying. He'd be better off alone with decent booze.

"You leaving?" Considering that he was stood with his coat on, Gene though that Chris's bloody stupid question was almost cause for demotion back to uniform, unfortunately training a new DC would be a pain in the arse big enough to make him let the stupidity slide.

"Date with a twenty-five year old." Chris looked suitably impressed, not suspecting that the twenty-five year old was Scottish and bottle shaped. Impatiently, Gene took the drink that Chris had yet to offer him, handed back the empty glass seconds later and left for the station. The privacy and comfort of his office was something he'd missed since his suspension, not that it had been the worst thing about his forced and furtive trip to Manchester. The single malt he'd stashed was calling to him like a siren though.

Gene told himself that he would not, under any circumstances, look up to see if her light was on when he got outside.

He also told himself that if he happened to see her window out of the corner of his eye, that it really wouldn't be his fault.

Her window was dark.


	2. My friends Now Seem So Thin And Frail

**for PhillipaRM who wanted another chapter**

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The single malt hadn't lasted nearly long enough. He should have remembered to buy another bottle but he'd had other things on his mind…like his missing DI and the increasingly less subtle suggestions from higher up that he got else somebody in until she either came back or requested a transfer, which he was under orders not to deny. He didn't want a new DI, the gossip about his track record was already bad enough and replacing her wouldn't sit right until he'd had it out with her…not a conversation he was particularly looking forward to.

As a man who'd previously been married to a particularly shrill harridan of a woman for more years that he cared to count, much less remember, Gene had a higher than average tolerance for the kind of torture a bird in a pissy mood could inflict. Alex Drake however, for more than one reason, had the uncanny knack of getting right under his skin, she was practically in his blood…and she had good reason to be in a pissy mood with him. He'd almost bloody killed her. Then again, it had been an accident and he had reason enough to be pissed at _her_ with all the stunts she'd pulled.

She'd been in a coma for three weeks and in hospital for another two before she'd discharged herself and it had been that long again since Luigi let it slip to Shaz that the signorina was home. That made it more than a month since he'd left her in the hospital and got out of dodge. It seemed longer, seemed like years had passed since they'd shared a bottle of red in her flat and he'd made a toast to the two of them.

It was past time for him to drag her arse back to work and he was through with pissing about and waiting for her to show her face. He decided there and then that as soon as he saw that she was at home he'd go straight up there and get some answers.

Enough was enough.

When Gene left the station there was light coming from a window above Luigi's. He could either take the bull by the horns and give it a good talking to, or pretend he hadn't seen anything and drive home like a spineless southern Nancy-boy. He really wanted to just go home and leave the fight he knew was inevitable to another day…which meant that he had no choice but to go up to her flat. Inescapable coppers' logic. Bugger.

Using the residents entrance to the building to avoid being seen by the rest of the department, Gene made his way to Alex's flat and stared at her door before making himself knock.

Alex was hours into another evening of staring at the TV, praying the permanently severed link between times would suddenly reconnect her to 2008 and finally out of tears. She'd cried herself dry and empty. All that was left was a quiet desperation and a growing fear that she was really clinically insane, a fear that had made her put the light on. Sane people didn't sit in the dark on their own.

Sane people also tended not to yelp when somebody knocked on their door.

Not knowing whether she'd heard his sissy first attempt at knocking Gene was forced to knock again, louder, losing any chance of escaping unnoticed.

Pulling her robe tighter around herself, Alex went to answer the door, opening it wide and looking blankly at the six feet of northern bastard that stood in her doorway.

"You going to say something or are you just going to stare at me?" She blinked and said the only thing that came to mind, fortunately it was something that made sense.

"What do you want?" It shouldn't have been a difficult question but it was, one requiring either an honest answer or a flippant one. Gene went for flippant.

"Was wondering where you'd been all this time. Luigi's almost bankrupt." Alex's blankness quickly became anger.

"Don't you dare to give me shit about not spending every waking moment downstairs getting drunk with you! You hate me Gene! You kicked me off the team, abandoned me! Why would I come looking for you? As far as I know you still want me dead." That decidedly low blow fell heavily on the sore spot Gene had been nursing since the day before Operation Rose he responded without thinking.

"I don't want you dead you dozy tart! I never bloody did!" Taken off guard by his vehemence, Alex felt some of her anger dissipate. No longer boiling but still simmering.

"You'd better come in before the neighbours call the station." She moved out of the doorway to let him pass by her, which he did without looking at her.

"An I don't hate you either…be a damn sight easier if I did." Her flat was different from how he remembered, tidier, no that wasn't the word he was looking for…it was bare. Whatever knickknacks Luigi had left or she had added weren't there anymore. The lights were on but nobody was at home. Christ he needed another drink.

"Right. Still got that scotch I left here or will I have to drink Luigi's piss water?" He put a levity into his voice that he didn't feel. Alex was more than a little incredulous.

"You're unbelievable. You shoot me and disappear for weeks and then you expect me to act like Operation Rose never happened…yet somehow _I'm_ the one who ends up in therapy." So Alex really was ill then, and he had shot her instead of helping her.

Fuck, fuck fuck. Ok so fuck didn't really cover it but it was the best he could do. While he digested that bombshell he made himself useful, finding two glasses and two bottles and setting them on the coffee table before sitting on the opposite end of the sofa to Alex.

"So you're really in…"

"Don't tell me you're surprised. I told you I was from the future, of course I'm in bloody therapy."

"But you're on the mend?" She laughed and it damn near turned to tears. Any hope Gene might have had of a quick recovery for her, him, and the whole department swiftly died.

"Not even close. My life has completely gone to shit." In an effort to keep from crying, she assumed lecture mode. "Sometimes, when something awful happens to somebody, something so painful that they literally can't carry on, they block it out, repress the memories to the point where they completely forget something bad happened. It's how some people react to childhood abuse." Any desire to dismiss what she was saying as psycho-bollocks evaporated with those last two words, as did any desire to interrupt. "After I woke up in hospital…I've been having nightmares, about Molly. Only…they aren't nightmares Gene. They're memories. I'm sure of it." She took a long drink of her wine. Both of them saw how her hands were trembling slightly.

"I never called her, never spoke about her and now I'm never going to see my daughter again. She's gone. Molly died. She was dead before I came here. She's _why_ I came here. It's all my fault."

"No it isn't. You didn't kill her Alex."

"I might as well have done." Gene watched her take another drink and was sure she was past the point of tasting it. "I was taking her to school when I was called to a hostage situation. A man had a woman at gunpoint by the Tate Modern…the Bankside Power Station. He was asking for me by name. I told Molly to stay in the car. I started talking to him, he let the hostage go and turned the gun on me…made me walk towards him. Molly saw, she was in the crowd. She ran to me and he took her. He had my little girl at gunpoint. I screamed at armed response, told them not to shoot. He made her go down the steps, said he'd blow her head off. I couldn't risk it so I just stood there and let him walk out of sight with her."

"You did the right thing. He'd have shot her."

"He shot her anyway. The second I heard it I knew…but I ran anyway. She was just lying there on the bank. It didn't look like she was asleep. Her eyes were open, like she'd been looking for me, waiting for me to rescue her only I never did." Alex seemed to be ignoring the tears rolling down her cheeks, Gene wasn't quite capable of doing the same, although he was buggered if he knew what to do about it.

"He shot her in the head, she died straight away. I never got to tell I loved her or say goodbye. I just got to find her on the ground with all that blood in her hair. There's no fucking wonder my mind broke." Privately Gene agreed, that kind of guilt, misplaced or not, was too much to bear. He still felt bad enough about shooting her even though it was an accident and she'd survived…and she was only his DI, that's what he told himself anyway.


End file.
